In the 17th & 18th Centuries leading families in Norfolk were in the forefront of establishing Virginia as a tobacco-growing slave colony:
- Adam Thoroughgood (1604-40), was from a prominent King’s Lynn family. In 1622, he and his wife settled in the newly established slave colony of Virginia. Thoroughgood was granted a large landholding and became a leading citizen in the colony.
- Sir William Gooch (1681–1751), was born in Great Yarmouth and became Governor of Virginia from 1727-49. He oversaw the laws affecting slaves including one of 1662, whereby children born in the colony would take the social status of their mothers, regardless of whether their fathers were white. This resulted in generation after generation of enslaved persons.
- Virginia became the major exporter of slaves to other US states.
- By 1830 there were 475,000 slaves in Virginia.
- Slave revolts in Virginia started at least as early as 1644 and continued up to and beyond John Brown’s famous uprising of 1859.
Many wealthy people in Norfolk owned or invested in slave plantations in Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, and Carolina.
This brought them immense profits which were frequently used to build, maintain and expand many of the Norfolk’s stately homes and great estates which are visited by thousands of tourists each year.
Many of these Norfolk aristocrats were members of the Whig Party; the party which dominated British Parliament from 1714 to the 1760s. As such, they were in the forefront of setting the pace for developing British colonialism and its essential use and increasing levels of slave labour.
Examples of Norfolk aristocrats benefiting from slavery include:
William Windham of Earsham Hall. Windham made a fortune from investing in the South Sea Company; a company involved in transporting Africans to Spanish colonies in the Caribbean and South America.
The Dalling Family of Earsham Hall. The Dallings owned slave plantations in Jamaica and benefitted from ‘compensation’ when their slaves obtained their freedom.
Prime Minister, Robert Walpole of Houghton Hall. Walpole’s political regime was known as the “Robinocracy” or as the “Robinarchy“. He used inside information to make his fortune in the slave-trading South Sea Company; as well as taking money directly from the public purse and through the selling of political positions. Visits from Royalty to Houghton Hall were common and his fellow politicians, particularly members of his Cabinet, held their meetings each Spring over a three-week period in the rooms at Houghton. These meetings were known as the Norfolk Congress and no doubt planned the expansion of Britain’s global colonialism and the rapid expansion of slave labour.
Thomas Coke, 1st Earl of Leister, of Holkham Hall Coke borrowed huge amounts of money to invest in the South Sea Company but acquired debts when the bubble burst. He was able to build Holkham Hall through purchasing positions of influence in the royal court and in government and after he started receiving a tax on shipping passing through the English Channel as it passed Dungeness lighthouse; naturally this included vessels involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and shipping slave-colony produce.
The Bedingfeld family of Oxborough Hall. Family members held positions in British colonies as well as marrying into slave-plantation owning families. Being close to the Catholic French Royal Court, and Marie Antoinette in particular, they benefitted from awards of land on the colony of Montserrat. They also benefitted from ‘compensation’ when their slaves gained their freedom. Significantly there is a 17th Century family painting “Boy and Girl and a Blackamoor Page” hanging in Oxborough Hall, evidence that the Bedingfelds were early slave owners.
There is still much work to do in both researching the slave-ownership of the aristocrats, landowners and merchants of Norfolk and breaking the racism of silence which surrounds the families involved as well as making the current publicity which promote our county’s stately homes more honest and inclusive.
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